More than 1 million nights have been booked in Nashville hotels as a result of future conventions and trade shows. / Jae S. Lee / The Tennessean

Written by

Joey Garrison

The Tennessean

Before the Metro Council’s 2010 vote to bankroll Tennessee’s most expensive municipally financed project ever, the president of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp. made a pledge: By the time Music City Center opens, there would be more than 1 million nights booked in Nashville hotel rooms as a result of future conventions and trade shows.

For project boosters, it became the primary way — arguably, a symbolic one — to measure the center’s progress. And on Monday, amid great fanfare and before throngs of elected officials, Mayor Karl Dean announced it had crossed the threshold.

“To me, this is a complete vindication of the strength of Nashville as a destination,” Dean said at Monday’s ceremonial opening of the $585 million center.

“As recently as Friday, more bookings were coming in,” he added, highlighting one of these groups that put the city over the magic number. It happened to be an organization, Shriners International, that will hold one meeting at Music City Center and another at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. “You can’t beat that.”

The moment made for a perfect punctuation to celebrate a facility tourism officials had pushed for more than a decade — a building for which it started to book events even before Metro acquired all the property needed to build it.

As of January, the CVC had said the center had produced 829,574 room nights and 101 bookings. The updated figure is 123 bookings and 1,062,787 hotel room nights.

Conventions that helped push Music City Center past the long-standing goal include: a group that has remained confidential, which will bring in 34,580 room nights for an event in 2021 (the most of any one convention); DECA, generating a combined 62,000 room nights in 2016 and 2020; and Church of God International, bringing 18,900 room nights in 2018.

“It’s been ‘hell or high water’ for the past three months,” Spyridon said. “The last two weeks have been a frenzy of getting contracts in.”

He called the confidential group a “long, tough sell” that he has worked to bring to Nashville for eight years.

Effort to sway votes

According to Spyridon, he first announced his goal at a council presentation to sway votes: “I literally just reached in my pocket. I got up, and put something out there that lets everybody know how serious we are.”

The 1 million room-night goal is only one way to analyze the center’s performance.

As The Tennessean has reported, Music City Center is still shy of booking projections over its first five years as outlined by Chicago-based HVS Consultants before the council’s approval.

Project leaders contend it is still far too early to make this sort of comparison. They also point out the city is exceeding the same consultants’ predictions for hotel/motel tax revenue, dollars that are used to pay off the center’s debt.

“There is no building seeing this kind of activity prior to opening,” Music City Center CEO Charles Starks said.

On Monday, the work didn’t end. After Dean helped cut the giant ribbon and finished his State of Metro address, Spyridon took prospective convention groups through the 2.1 million-square-foot center. More than 85 groups were there to take part in the center’s grand opening and the concerts at night, including the finale with Sheryl Crow.